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Clairefontaine

Clairefontaine - Abbaye
The ruins of the Clairefontaine Abbey, are located in a wooded valley, about four kilometers east of Arlon. A few decades before it was built, St. Bernard visiting Trier would have stopped at this place to bless a source which took the name of the saint, and which still flows today. The founding of the abbey dates back to Ermesinde (1186- -1247). The Countess of Luxembourg had a dream in which she saw the Virgin who asked her to build a convent. But it is her son, Henry V (called le Blondel), who will achieve this dream a few years after the death of his mother. The abbey incorporates the Cistercian Order in 1253. 

After several phases of reconstruction between the 13th and 18th century, the abbey, daughter of Clairvaux, was burned in 1794. In the 19th century, the ruined site was bought by the Jesuits who built the country house of their novitiate of Arlon. In 1875 they built the chapel dedicated to ?Notre-Dame du Bel Amour?, at the site of the former nave of the abbey church. The splendid windows of the chapel date from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and trace the history of ancient abbey. Clairefontaine was built as a monastery and a dynastic necropolis. The visitor today can still pray in front of the tomb of Ermesinde in the crypt of the chapel.


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